Hunter lifted my chin with his finger again, steeling his gaze as he forced mine to meet it. He whispered the most vulnerable words I had ever heard him tell me:
“I don’t want you to go.”
The conviction, and the pain, in his eyes told me how truthful he was being. He meant those six words with everything that he had.
It pained me to give him my inevitable response.
“I don’t have a choice, Hunter.”
Chapter 51
The gravel crunched under the oversized tires of my old Jeep wrangler as I pulled into the parking lot and came to a complete stop. Before turning the key and killing the ignition, I sat and stared at myself in the rearview mirror, reflecting on the eternity that had dragged on by since I’d last been here…
It had only been a couple of months since I returned to Phoenix – but that time had made sure to be plenty eventful.
True to his word, Lieutenant Crabbe ensured that I was stripped of my badge the minute I showed up at his office. Unfortunately, he had already caught wind of an interesting development – a whole van load of missing women, my kidnapped cheerleaders included, had appeared in an El Paso hospital in the middle of the night.
He wasn’t exactly shy in grilling me for six hours in an interrogation room over that one, but I stuck to my guns.
I knew nothing.
I saw nothing.
I simply spent that afternoon drinking some beers with old friends and watching my career fall apart.
It was complete bullshit, and the entire precinct was well aware of that… Everyone from the Chief on down the line knew what had really happened. They didn’t know the details, but they knew that I’d found those cheerleaders… and somehow, I’d found them below the border. In a quiet, closed-doors meeting that was officially off the record and after office hours, the chief privately thanked me for whatever miracle I had pulled off – telling me in no uncertain terms that I was owed a favor… And that I needed to go away quietly. My career was over.
I’d saved him a lot of media backlash for incompetency of his entire department, and saved our partners in Tucson the same trouble… And I was shown the door for it.
Watching everything you’ve worked for crumble around you hurts…
My father, on the other hand was overjoyed.
He didn’t ask me for the truth – he knew I’d tell him if it was safe for him to know.
He told me that he couldn’t be prouder.
In the time since, I had plenty to do… at least for a couple of months. I took the Chief up on his favor, and was able to find myself a new career that was even more rewarding than before.
Which only left me one tiny little problem to finally address.
Ripped from my reflection, I glanced over at the dilapidated old bar. With a small smirk, I finally killed the ignition and stepped out over the gravel, feeling it crunch beneath my boots once again.
When I walked back into the bar, I strolled past the regulars and straight up to the sour redhead behind the counter – whose friendly face darkened the closer I came.
“Hi, Elmira,” I greeted her nonchalantly. “I’ll take a glass of water… easy on the spit.”
She stared at me with a smug look on her face. “I told you before, and I’ll tell you again – we don’t serve your kind here.”
“Well, it’s a damn good thing I’m not that kind of girl anymore,” I responded with a lighthearted shrug, reaching into my pocket and tossing a card onto the counter.
In bold letters and embossed print, it read:
Sarah Buchanan
PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR
“Now, if you’d be so kind, bartender… fetch me a goddamned glass of water.”
A familiar laugh piped up from the darkness. My eyes zeroed in across the bar, landing on a cross-armed man in the shadows. He was clad in the leather of the Devil’s Dragons MC, with a rugged voice stained with smugness.
“You’d be quicker to pour this woman a drink if you’d seen the way she shoots…”
Hunter smiled as he leaned forward off of the wood paneling, strolling into the light from the outside windows. He lifted a few strands of hair from my face with a tender pair of fingers.
“Had a feeling you’d be back, sooner or later…”
“You know that I had to keep my distance while the media spun their tops over those girls,” I replied comfortably.
“Couldn’t even spare me a little phone call, could you?” He asked, his voice smooth and soft.
“I wasn’t sure that I could trust myself if I did…”
“Well, you’re here now,” he observed calmly, his eyes firmly locked onto mine. I heard and ignored a veiled scoff from the redhead bartender. He leaned a little forward, eyebrow arching, and said, “Do you trust yourself to be a good girl?”
A smirk crossed my lips.
Did I?
“I’m here because somebody with deep pockets lost a cargo container… and word on the street is that you’ve got operations out in California. I know that the Devil’s Dragons run the port of Los Angeles.”
“All business, no pleasure?” Hunter chuckled, reaching out to turn my hips until I was facing him.
The same crystal blue eyes gazed mischievously into my soul, inviting me to surrender for a few hours. That same sexy stubble shifted beneath his smile, and I spotted that same sexy dragon tattoo rolling down his arm…
“Maybe a little pleasure, too,” I admitted, feeling the heat of my face flushing red as the bikers nearby began to hoot and holler.
“In that case, I’ll clear my schedule…” Hunter murmured, his finger lifting my chin. “Maybe we’ll talk business tomorrow, hmm?”
The men around us cheered again.
My eyes caught the piercing but approving gaze of Grizz, his arm still locked up in the cast from that bullet he took in Juarez. I figured he’d have discarded it already, but it would probably be coming off any day now…
“I think business can wait one night,” I spoke, turning back to Hunter. “But there’s something that you need to know.”
“Don’t worry, Princess,” he chuckled hungrily. “I know it’s been a while. You’re probably out of practice… I’ll go easy on you.”
I smirked, shaking my head. “It’s not that.”
The room slowly drifted silent, the whistles and laughs gradually drawn back. The single sound in the bar was water pouring from a tap into a cup behind me, slamming onto the countertop harder than necessary.
“Hunter… I’m pregnant.”